Password Protect Your Blog Posts
March 2, 2009 ·
If you are keen to charge people to subscribe to your blog posts or to write some blog posts which only subscribers can see, WordPress’ “password protect” feature makes it easy to manage.
To see an example of a password protected post, visit http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/2009/03/password-protected-test-post/. The password is test.
How to Password Protect Your Posts
- Write your post as you normally would.
- Once you are done, switch to HTML view (top right above the content box)
- Decide which part of your post should be visible on your email newsletter without having to enter a password (this can be an excerpt or just the first paragraph)
- Put your cursor immediately after this section and click on the MORE button
- Enter a password in the Password Protect this Post section at the bottom of the page
- Publish your post
See the screenshot below if you are using WordPress 2.7 or above.
Who Gets the Password
The answer to this is your subscribers. You can either show them the password automatically when they subscribe (a great incentive for joining your mailing list) or have them pay to subscribe and give them the password once they have paid (a great way to earn money from your website as long as people want the information you have on offer). Both options rely on the Post Notification email newsletter plugin for WordPress.
Signup for E-Newsletter to Get Password Option
- Include wording on your site to the effect that when visitors sign up to your e-newsletter, they get access to all your expert advice, step-by-step guides etc.
- Change the wording on Post Notification plugin’s “registration success” template to include your password (replace using ftp).
- This means they will be shown the password just after signup.
Paid Subscription to Get Password Option
- Upload and activate the WordPress E-Commerce Plugin to your website.
- Setup a new product called newsletter subscription with price, description etc
- Upload a pdf file to the product in the Downloads section which includes the password (and perhaps your logo, summary of services etc).
- When customers pay, they are able to download the document.
- You then need to manually add their email address to the Post Notification subscriber list so they start receiving emails when you write posts.
You need to decide whether you display a box for visitors to subscribe to ‘free’ posts themselves or have all subscription functionality on the admin side. If you do include a subscription box, you could include enticements to your ‘free’ subscribers to get a paid subscription to get access to all your posts.
Tips and Tricks
- Write non-password protected posts as well both for search engines and to give visitors a reason to signup.
- Use your categories to divide up your posts.
- Remember you can choose for a post you write not to be sent as an e-newsletter by selecting ‘No’ in the Post Notification section at the bottom of each post.
Other Articles You Might Enjoy
- Create a Watchlist of Favourite Posts - July 19th, 2010
- WordPress Theme for Real Estate - June 23rd, 2010
- Multiple Category 'Super' Search Box - June 16th, 2010
- WordPress Posts to E-Newsletter - May 10th, 2010
- Create WordPress Posts from Flickr - April 29th, 2010
Categories: Blogging, E Newsletters, Wordpress Tutorials
Tags: blog post by email, E Newsletters, paid subscriptions, password as download, pay to subscribe, private blog posts, subscribe for password, user
Chief website designer at Creative Web Ideas and author of the Creative Web Ideas blog. If you enjoyed this post - Subscribe to our Email Newsletter to receive future posts by email (once a month).
[...] Password Protect Your Blog Posts [...]
I don’t seem to have a “password protect this post” box anywhere on the write a post page.
Do I need a plugin?
WP 2.7
Hi Lyn,
Thanks for bringing this up. The latest versions of WordPress have the password box in a different spot.
You need to expand the visibility section inside the Publish box (top right of your post). When you select Password Protected, you will be able to enter a password.
I have added a screenshot to the above article to show this.
Your post makes it sound like you put your more tag in the place where you want the password protection to begin.
this is not the case. At least not with 2.7.1
the entire post is protected.
I’m still looking for a way to partially protect a post. I want part to be available to all readers and then part protected.
Hi Rob.
To protect only part of your post (and more), purchase the WP Member plugin. Once you are on the Smart Media Pro wesite, you need to click on Software, then on WordPress Membership Plugin at the top of the page.
Let me know how you go.
Hello Jo,
Do you know of a WordPress plugin that allows me to password-protect my posts for multiple users? In this scenario, one user would have a password to give them access to certain posts, while another user has a different password to see a different set of posts. Is this even possible?
Many thanks!
/Bob
Hi Bob,
The WP Membership Plugin should allow you to do all that – http://smartmediapro.com/products-and-services/
I was wondering if there’s a way to assign multiple passwords to one page – Basically, I have a program running for certain visitors, their first purchase is entitled to 15% off, so I made a new cart system for those products, but I only want the people who I approve to have access to it and I’d like to make it so that they can only get in there once for their purchase and won’t be able to purchase again at the discounted price. I’d like for each user to have their own password. Ideally, I would like this password to be good for only one visit….is this possible?
Are you using the wp e-commerce plugin for your products?